The main north-south thoroughfare is Nostrand Avenue, but the main shopping
street is Fulton Street, which lies above the main subway line for
the area (the A and C trains). Fulton Street runs east-west the
length of the neighborhood and intersects high-traffic streets
including Bedford Avenue, Nostrand Avenue and
Stuyvesant Avenue. Bedford-Stuyvesant is actually made up of four
neighborhoods: Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean
Hill and Weeksville.

In pre-revolutionary Kings County,
Bedford, which now forms the heart of the community, was the first
major settlement east of the then Village of Brooklyn on the ferry road to Jamaica and
eastern Long
Island.

The community of Bedford contained one of the oldest free black
communities in the U.S., Weeksville, much of which is still
extant and preserved as a historical site. Ocean
Hill, a subsection founded in 1890 is primarily a residential area.

Ethnic
changes

During and after World War II, large numbers of blacks,
migrating from the Southern United States upon the
decline of agricultural work and seeking economic opportunities in
the North, moved into the neighborhood. They often preferred it to
the available housing in Harlem.

Post-war
problems

A series of problems led to a long decline in the neighborhood.
Some of the new residents who had been rural workers had difficulty
finding reasonably paid work in the urban New York economy. The
city itself was in a period of steady decline, exacerbated by
abandonment of parts of the transportation network, disappearance
of industrial jobs, decline of public facilities and services,
inability to deal with increasing crime, and difficulties in
municipal government. The movement of significant parts of its
population to suburban areas
ghettoized a racially diverse
neighborhood.

1960s and
1970s

The 1960s and 1970s were a difficult time for New York City and
affected Bedford-Stuyvesant seriously. One of the first urban riots of the era took place there. Social and racial divisions
in the city contributed to the tensions, which climaxed when
attempts at community control in the nearby Ocean
Hill-Brownsville school district
pitted some black community residents and activists (from both
inside and outside the area) against teachers, the majority of whom were white; many
of them Jewish. Charges of racism were a common part of
social tensions at the time.

In 1964, race riots broke out in the Manhattan neighborhood of
Harlem after an Irish American NYPD lieutenant, Thomas Gilligan, shot and
killed an African American teenager, James Powell, 15.[6] The
riot spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant and resulted in the destruction
and looting of many neighborhood businesses, many of which were
Jewish-owned. Race relations between the NYPD and the city's black
community were strained as crime was high in black neighborhoods
and few black policemen were present on the force.[7] In
black New York neighborhoods, crimes related to drugs and homicides
were higher than anywhere else in the city contributing to the
problems between the white dominated police force and black
community. Coincidentally enough, the 1964 riot took place across
the NYPD's 28th and 32nd precinct located in Harlem, and the 79th
precinct located in Bedford-Stuyvesant which at one time were the
only three police precincts in the NYPD that black police officers
were allowed to patrol in.[8] Race
riots followed in 1967 and 1968, as part of the political and racial tensions in the United States of
the era, aggravated by continued high unemployment among blacks,
continued de facto segregation in housing, the failure to enforce
civil rights laws, and the murder of
Caucasians by blacks.

In 1977, a power outage occurred throughout all of New
York City due to a power failure at the Con Edison Plant. As a
result, looting was widespread throughout the city, especially in
poor black and Puerto Rican areas of Harlem, the Bronx and
Brooklyn. Bedford-Stuyvesant and neighboring Bushwick were two of
the worst hit areas. Thirty-five blocks of Broadway, the street
dividing the two communities, were affected, with 134 stores
looted, 45 of which were set ablaze.

Recent
Trends

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Early-Mid 2000's
gentrification

Beginning in the 2000s, the neighborhood began to experience
gentrification. [5]

The two significant reasons for this were the affordable housing
stock consisting of handsome brownstonerowhouses located on quiet
tree-lined streets and the marked decrease of crime in the
neighborhood. The latter is at least partly attributable to the
decline of the national crack epidemic which
occurred in the late 1980s and through the 1990s and also to
improved policing methods which New York has used in the last
decade.

In July 2005, the New York City Police Department designated the
Fulton Street-Nostrand Avenue business district in
Bedford-Stuyvesant as an "Impact Zone". The Police Department has
also ranked Bed-Stuy as one of the neighborhoods that has
experienced a steady decline in crime and has had improved safety
The designation directed significantly increased levels of police
protection and resources to the area centered on the intersection
of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue for a period of six months. It
was renewed for another six-month period in December 2005. Since
the designation of the Impact Zone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, crime
within the district decreased 15% from the previous year.

Despite the improvements and increasing stability of the
community, Bedford-Stuyvesant has continued to be stigmatized in
some circles by a lingering public perception left from the rough
times of the late 20th Century. In March 2005 a campaign was
launched to supplant the "Bed-Stuy, Do-or-Die" image in the public
consciousness with the more positive "Bed-Stuy, and Proud of
It".

Through a series of "wallscapes" (large outdoor murals), the
campaign hopes to honor famous community members, including
community activist and poet June Jordan, activist Hattie Carthan,
rapper and actor Mos Def,
and actor and comedian Chris Rock.[12]
Additionally various artistic and cultural neighborhood events and
celebrations such as the neighborhood's annual Universal Hip Hop Parade[13] seek
to show off the area's positive accomplishments..

As a result, Bedford-Stuyvesant became increasingly racially,
economically and ethnically diverse, with an increase of
foreign-born Afro-Caribbean and
African
residents as well as college students from assorted ethnic
backgrounds. As is expected with gentrification, the influx of new
residents has sometimes contributed to the displacement of poorer
residents. In many other cases, newcomers have simply rehabilitated
and occupied formerly vacant and abandoned properties.

Many long-time residents and business owners expressed the
concern that they would be priced out by newcomers whom they
disparagingly characterize as "yuppies and buppies" (black urban professionals).
They feared that the neighborhood's ethnic character will be lost.
Others pointed out that a 70% black population remained.
Furthermore Bedford-Stuyvesant's population had experienced much
less displacement of the black population, including those who are
economically disadvantaged, than other areas of Brooklyn, such as
Cobble Hill.[14] Many
of the new residents are upwardly mobile middle incomeblack families, as well as immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Neighborhoods
surrounding Bedford-Stuyvesant in Northern and Eastern
Brooklyn are also majority black
such as Brownsville, Canarsie,
Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, East New York, and Fort
Greene. Together these neighborhoods have a population of about
940,000 and are roughly 82% black making it the largest black
neighborhood in the United States. [1]

Such changes could have brought in an increase in local jobs and
other economic activity. To that effect, both the Fulton Street and
Nostrand Avenue commercial corridors become part of the
Bedford-Stuyvesant Business Improvement District, bringing along
with it a beautification project that provides various pedestrian
and landscape improvements. [16]

Late
2000's-Present continued gentrification

Many properties and are being renovated in the neighborhood.
Crime overall is down in Bedford Stuyvesant by 15 percent from last
year, down 28 percent from 2001, and down 70 percent from 1994. A
number of white and middle class blacks as well as a large number
of students have moved into the area. New clothing stores,
mid-century collector furniture stores, florists, bakeries, cafes
and restaurants have opened over the past two years and Fresh
Direct has begun delivering to the area.

In popular
media

Bedford-Stuyvesant's neighborhood identity is due in part to its
representation in a variety of popular media. Director Spike Lee has prominently
featured the streets and brownstone blocks of Bedford-Stuyvesant in
his films, including Do the Right Thing (1989),
Crooklyn (1994),
Clockers (1995), and Summer of Sam
(1999). Chris Rock's
UPN (later CW) television sitcom, Everybody Hates Chris,
portrays Rock's life growing up as a teenager in Bedford-Stuyvesant
in 1982-1987.

Bedford-Stuyvesant is featured in the 1971 film The French
Connection, in which NYPD narcotics detective Popeye Doyle
is assigned to a Brooklyn police station that appears to be located
in Bedford-Stuyvesant as mentioned by his supervisor Walt Simonson.
On a 1997 episode of NYPD
Blue "Taillight's last Gleaming", NYPD Lieutenant Arthur Fancy requests
that an officer who pulled over him and his wife in a racially
motivated manner be transferred to a Bedford-Stuyvesant precinct as
punishment to learn how to better interact with various black citizens. Bedford-Stuyvesant
is featured in the 2002 film
RFK where
following the Watts Riot in Los Angeles, New York United
States Senator Robert
Fitzgerald Kennedy tours the neighborhood as a means of
figuring out how to confront the war on poverty.

Billy Joel's 1980s
hit single, "You May Be Right" mentions the
neighborhood with the lyrics "I was stranded in the combat zone / I
walked through Bedford-Stuy alone / even rode my motorcycle in the
rain" when discussing crazy things the singer had done in his
life.

The neighborhood was also the setting for portions of Dave Chappelle's
2004 documentary Block Party.
Chappelle and many prominent rap and soul artists performed an
impromptu concert at the Broken Angel house in Clinton Hill, which is a
neighborhood that borders Bed-Stuy.

In "Scan,"
an episode of the television show Prison Break, fugitive Fernando Sucre
flees to Bedford-Stuyvesant to meet his friend, only to find out
that his sweetheart will be getting married in Las Vegas.

The Notorious B.I.G. song "Unbelievable" starts with the line
referring to himself as "Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the
livest one." Also the song "Machine Gun Funk" contains the
lyric: "Bed-Stuy, the place where my head rest" referring to
Biggie's roots in the neighborhood.

In the Notorious, the actor of The Notorious B.I.G. states that
he was growing up in: "Do or Die Bedstuy"

^
Lee, Felicia R. "Where Everyone Loves to Love
Chris", The New York Times, October 30,
2006. Accessed October 6, 2007. "It was a scream heard all the way
down the block on Decatur Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. If you know
TV, or ikif you know that Brooklyn neighborhood, you know it’s a
sweet stretch of well-tended homes and the setting for "Everybody
Hates Chris," the comedy series on the CW network inspired by the
adolescent adventures of the comedian Chris Rock."